Mohit Rathod – Mumbai
Tourism New Zealand, as part of its marketing efforts, is targeting independent professionals in the India market. The destination witnessed an increase of 11.2 per cent in arrivals from India. Specifically in the holiday segment, New Zealand marked 15.4 per cent growth from India. “In the last FY, overall arrivals in New Zealand have been up than ever before. We continue to see double digit growth globally and particularly from India. We are targeting independent professionals aged between 25 and 54 years. Within this age group, we also focus on MICE segment; we target groups ranging from 50 to 400. We encourage groups to visit New Zealand outside of our peak season, because we remain busy with other segments during the peak season. We have signed an MoU with Immigration New Zealand, wherein we have six travel agancies focusing on MICE, which has resulted in a lot more feedback and more MICE business coming to New Zealand,” said Steven Dixon, regional manager – South and South East Asia, Tourism New Zealand, while speaking to Express TravelWorld at the recently held Kiwi Link 2016, an annual travel trade show by Tourism New Zealand, in Mumbai. New Zealand is one of the major film tourism destinations in the world. Dixon informed that after the destination’s association with films such as The Hobbit, there has been an increase in the number of arrivals. He stated, “Film tourism has been really successful in New Zealand; we have marked 60 per cent growth from the India market after our previous campaigns on the sidelines of film tourism. We have had 48,000 arrivals from the India market and we believe that we will continue to see double digit growth from India.”
Tourism New Zealand is currently focusing significantly on Mumbai and Delhi, alongside Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Chennai. Elaboring on the marketing efforts, Dixon informed, “We are increasing our efforts in the India market; we have amazing relationships with the travel trade and we want to enhance those even more. We will continue to focus our efforts in Mumbai and Delhi. We don’t have a direct flight, but we have a lot of one-stop options. At the moment, we are also seeing an increase in stay days from India, which is about 8.2 per cent. We are reactive to Tier II and Tier III cities, but we need to be focused on the Tier I markets.”
About 50 per cent of arrivals in New Zealand comprise of leisure, 30 per cent includes friends and families and the remaining consists of MICE.
